about

Rena Xu, MD, MBA, is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and an attending surgeon and affiliate faculty in computational health informatics at Boston Children's Hospital. As a practicing surgeon with over 15 years of clinical experience, she brings deep understanding of the misaligned incentives and organizational complexities that shape health care delivery. Her research spans two areas: analyzing longitudinal data to map and improve care trajectories and developing digital interventions to improve health outcomes. Prior to her academic appointment, she was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group, where her work focused on health care strategy, organizational design, and value-based payment innovation.

Dr. Xu writes extensively about health care. Her work has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Yale Review, among other publications. She is completing a book on pathways to better health care in America with MIT Press.

Dr. Xu holds an AB in Biochemical Sciences and Government from Harvard College, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a former Blavatnik Fellow in Life Science Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. She completed a residency in urology at Massachusetts General Hospital and fellowship in pediatric urology at Boston Children's Hospital.